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Summary of the major events in the IC circle in 2020

Latest update time:2020-12-18
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It’s time to write a summary again. Someone made a summary of the IC industry in 2020: Bitmain is fighting, Bitmain is fighting, Bitmain is fighting, Spreadtrum is fighting after Bitmain is fighting; Spreadtrum is fighting, Spreadtrum is fighting, Spreadtrum is fighting, Spreadtrum is fighting, Arm is fighting; Arm is fighting, Arm is fighting, Arm is fighting, SMIC is fighting… “Internal fighting”, “fighting”, “personnel earthquake”, these words that seem to have nothing to do with the IC industry, have been heard with exceptional frequency this year. Here is a brief review.

From golden partnership to game of thrones, who owns Bitmain?


In 2013, Wu Jihan, who was born in the 1980s, met a salesperson under a bridge on a street in Beijing. After learning that the chips he was selling were self-developed, he found Zhan Ketuan, who was starting a business, through this employee. The two became acquainted and later founded Bitmain.

Wu Jihan (left) and Zhan Ketuan (right)

Wu Jihan holds a bachelor's degree in economics and psychology from Peking University. After graduation, he worked as an analyst and investment manager in a venture capital company until he accidentally came into contact with Bitcoin in May 2011. He became the moderator of the Chinese version of Bitcoin Talk and was the first person in China to translate Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin white paper into Chinese. Zhan Ketuan graduated from the Institute of Microelectronics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. After leaving school and research institutions, he has been engaged in integrated circuit design and has been deeply involved in the chip industry.

In mid-2013, under the leadership of Zhan Ketuan, the BM1380 chip based on 55nm technology was successfully developed. The following month, Bitmain's first mining machine, Antminer S1, began to ship. It is not difficult to find that the two are a "golden pair" with tacit cooperation. According to Bitmain's official WeChat public account, Zhan Ketuan mentioned in an interview in 2015: "The founders of Bitmain are Xiaohan and I, and the core technical team has been with me for many years. We work very well together."

"Micree (Zhan Ketuan) and I are more of a complementary team, just like a table tennis doubles match. When the ball comes, whoever is in the best position to receive the ball has the final say. The key is for everyone to cooperate in the game and win." Wu Jihan said in an interview with Mars Finance in June 2018.

In the past years, Wu Jihan and Zhan Ketuan led Bitmain to gain favor from capital and usher in its "highlight moment".

Bitmain’s past investors include IDG Capital, Sequoia Capital, US hedge fund Coatue Management, Singapore government investment fund EDBI, etc.

Based on 2017 revenue, Bitmain is the world's largest ASIC-based cryptocurrency mining machine company, with a market share of 74.5%.


According to the prospectus submitted by Bitmain to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2018, the company is the world's largest Bitcoin mining machine manufacturer, focusing on designing ASIC chips for cryptocurrency mining and artificial intelligence. From 2015 to 2017, Bitmain's revenue increased from US$137 million to US$2.518 billion, and its net profit increased from US$48.603 million to US$701 million. In the first half of 2018, its revenue and net profit reached US$2.845 billion and US$743 million, respectively.
Since Bitmain announced a restructuring in March 2019, when both Zhan Ketuan and Wu Jihan stepped down as CEOs, the conflict between the two has continued to escalate. At the time, many media reported that Wu Jihan had faded out of the company's management, and Wu Jihan's focus was on blockchain, while Zhan Ketuan's focus was on chips and AI.

Wang Lin, a former employee of Bitmain, believes that the CO-CEO system has no obvious flaws when the company is developing smoothly and has sufficient funds; however, when financial pressure arises, the decision-making efficiency is low and the contradictions will continue to be magnified. In addition, the CO-CEO system makes it easy for company employees to form "teams", making internal governance more difficult. Conflicts or differences between top managers can easily be transmitted to employees, affecting departmental integration.

According to a document, Beijing Bit's management structure changed in 2018, and the concentration of management personnel increased. In November 2018, the board of directors of Beijing Bit changed from Zhan Ketuan, Zhao Zhaofeng, Wu Jihan, Zhou Feng, and Ge Yuesheng to Zhan Ketuan, and the supervisor changed from Hu Yishuo to Wu Jihan. In addition, the company does not have a board of directors, but has one executive director, who is elected by shareholders.

"Zhan Ketuan may hope to see long-term returns and has his own feelings and ideas about technology; while Wu Jihan is more of an investor and pays more attention to project management." In August this year, Li Can, who is close to Bitmain, gave the above evaluation of the two founders.

Before 2017, Bitmain was in a period of light asset and high profit development. However, after several rounds of financing, from 2017 to 2018, the investment and personnel input expanded rapidly, and the cost input continued to grow. In addition, the price of Bitcoin fell sharply in 2018. Financial pressure followed, and the conflict between the two continued to escalate. "Since Bitmain entered the AI ​​field, it has been in the investment stage." Wang Lin said, "When entering this field, the two founders agreed that this was the future development trend. They did not hesitate to recruit many talents with high salaries, and also hoped to make long-term and continuous investments in the AI ​​field."


However, "ideals are too full, reality is too skinny." Bitmain's AI business revenue has not been significant. Mining machine sales are Bitmain's most profitable business. In the three years from 2015 to 2017, its mining machine sales revenue accounted for 78.6%, 77.3%, and 89.9% of its total revenue respectively. In the first half of 2018, this proportion expanded to 94.3%. Previously, there was also a saying that Bitmain "used mining machines to support AI."

The conflict really became public in 2019. On March 26, 2019, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange disclosed that the prospectus of Bitmain had expired. On October 29 of the same year, Wu Jihan issued an internal letter to remove Zhan Ketuan from all his positions in Beijing Bitmain. This was seen by the outside world as the official outbreak of internal fighting in Bitmain.

At that time, Zhan Ketuan was in Shenzhen to attend the 2019 Shenzhen Security Expo. When he returned to Bitmain, he found that he had been banned from entering the company's office area. After that, the legal representative of Beijing Bitmain was changed from Zhan Ketuan to Wu Jihan. Shortly afterwards, the legal representative of Beijing Bitmain was changed from Wu Jihan to Liu Luyao.

"In a sense, similar situations may occur in every company, but Bitmain is more intense." Li Yijia, a person in the mining circle close to Bitmain, said that it is difficult to say who is right and who is wrong in the real disagreement between Wu Jihan and Zhan Ketuan unless the parties take the initiative to speak out, but the two do have differences in the company's business decision-making level. The different experiences and backgrounds of the two have led to different perspectives on technology research and development and market development. At that time, the fuse of the conflict may be that Wu Jihan disagreed with Zhan Ketuan's investment logic and believed that some project investment decisions might be too radical, which led to their "parting ways" at the end of 2019.

In July this year, Wu Jihan pointed out in an internal letter that in September 2019, the financial department estimated that the company's funding gap by the end of October had reached $300 million. The star enterprise that seemed to be in great glory to the outside world was actually on the verge of collapse. As a result, the shareholders decided on October 28, 2019 to remove Zhan Ketuan from his original position in the company.

"From the perspective of development time, Bitmain is still a startup company and it has moved a little too fast before. Mr. Zhan has a strong passion for technology, and Mr. Wu comes from an investment bank and has a certain degree of expertise in strategy. If the division of labor is done well, Bitmain's future development will be unlimited. But neither of the two bosses has a management background, and when the company develops to a certain level, its management deficiencies become apparent, and it is necessary to find professional managers to manage the company." Wang Lin believes.


After Wu Jihan announced the dismissal of Zhan Ketuan, Bitmain ushered in a wave of layoffs at the end of 2019. Reporters learned from multiple sources that at that time, the AI ​​team built by Zhan Ketuan himself was the "hardest hit area".

“You have so many salaries to pay, there is no other way but to cut back. Bitmain has previously been an asset-light development, and suddenly the cost pressure is huge.” Wang Lin said, “The decision to lay off employees was indeed painful at the time. It was difficult to find a perfect balance as to which department to lay off and what kind of agreement to reach.”

In addition to staff reductions, Bitmain's business has become differentiated. As of early September, a reporter learned from a person close to Bitmain that Jihan Wu manages the company's chip research and development, hardware research and development, embedded software research and development, supply chain and AI marketing teams, while Jihan Wu manages the company's finance, mining pool and mining machine sales teams.

But before that, Wu Jihan issued an open letter stating that it had started the operation of the second supply chain department to replace the original role of Century Cloud Core controlled by Zhan Ketuan in the group system. At the same time, Bitmain Tech (Hong Kong Bit), of which Wu Jihan serves as executive director, enjoys all intellectual property rights of Bitmain in the production of BM chips.

On the other hand, the reporter learned from multiple sources that from October 2019 to August 2020, Wu Jihan and Zhan Ketuan had some negotiations, but no effective final results were reached.

In addition, on June 23 this year, Beijing Bit’s WeChat public account “Antminer” released an announcement on the negotiation and implementation progress of Beijing Bit’s business cooperation, saying that the two major shareholders negotiated on basic issues such as the company’s production and operation, and reached a preliminary consensus. But what made the outside world sigh was that soon, this announcement was deleted.

The dispute between the two ultimately manifested itself in equity. The top layer of Bitmain's equity is the Cayman company, which holds 100% of the Hong Kong company, and the Hong Kong company holds 100% of Beijing Bit, which is the main operating entity of Bitmain. According to the articles of association disclosed when Bitmain applied for listing in Hong Kong, the Cayman company implements AB shares, and the A shares held by other shareholders only have 1x voting rights, while Zhan Ketuan and Wu Jihan hold B shares with 10x voting rights. Therefore, Zhan Ketuan, who holds 36% of the shares, holds 59.6% of the voting rights, and Wu Jihan, who holds 20.25% of the shares, holds 33.5% of the voting rights. After that, according to multiple media reports, Wu Jihan cancelled the 10x voting rights of B shares on November 13, 2019.

According to an internal letter to all Bitmain employees released in August this year, obtained by reporters, in December 2019, Zhan Ketuan filed a lawsuit with the Cayman Court regarding Wu Jihan's cancellation of 10 times the voting rights of Bitmain's Class B shares on November 13, 2019. The outcome of the lawsuit may be an important factor in resolving the Bitmain shareholder dispute.

An executive of a company in the mining machine field told reporters that the snatch of official seals, business licenses, and lawsuits are essentially due to the differences in business philosophy between Wu and Zhan, and neither of them is willing to compromise. In addition, the "internal strife" between the two sides may continue, and it is difficult for one side to win absolutely.

The aforementioned executives believe that the ongoing dispute between Wu Jihan and Zhan Ketuan has caused great harm to the industry. As a leading company, the continuous turmoil has brought fear to employees and a poor sense of belonging; as former entrepreneurial partners, the two sides could have complemented each other's strengths, but due to insufficient structure, they staged a drama of "sharing the good times but not the bad times".

Under the pressure of internal friction between the two parties, Bitmain's business progress was also affected.

A statement on Beijing Bit’s official website on September 14 showed that “since 2020, conflicts among management have damaged our market share and brand image. Customers have been lost, employees have been forced to take sides, and their benefits cannot be guaranteed. Various emergencies and negative news have even hindered the listing plan, and the options promised to employees have almost become waste paper.”

In Wang Lin’s opinion, the fight between the two has caused losses to businesses (such as mining machines), resulting in the stagnation of some projects, and the company’s development is no longer as smooth as before.

"The split at the management level has had a certain impact on the company's current production, but the two sides have also cooperated to a certain extent on some specific projects." Speaking of the impact of the dispute between the two sides on the company's business, Zhan Ketuan responded in early September this year, "The Beijing office has fully resumed work for more than three months. The company is currently operating smoothly, and the business of various departments has begun to advance normally and is gradually getting on track. At the AI ​​business level, the implementation scenarios are becoming increasingly rich. Recently, many of our projects are being implemented; in the mining machine business, we are constantly exploring new technologies, striving to break through the industry ceiling, and multiple currencies and multiple technology nodes are blooming at the same time."

On the other hand, in addition to internal pressure, Bitmain is also facing fluctuations in the macro external environment. At the beginning of 2020, the epidemic swept across the country. Bitmain, Canaan Creative, and Shenma Mining Machine all issued announcements at the time to postpone production, delivery, and after-sales. As the new crown epidemic spread around the world, major mining machine purchasing countries such as Russia and Iran also experienced logistics interruptions and were unable to deliver mining machines.

In May this year, the conflict between the two parties escalated. On the morning of May 8, when Zhan Ketuan was collecting the Beijing Bit business license as the legal representative from the industrial and commercial department, his license was snatched away on the spot.

After many twists and turns, Zhan Ketuan took control of Bitmain. On May 9 this year, the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System showed that the legal representative of Beijing Bitmain was changed to Zhan Ketuan.

Previously, the two sides had different opinions on the dispute over the business license.

Zhan Ketuan said that the Beijing Haidian District Market Supervision Bureau legally restored the registration of Beijing Bit's legal representative and executive director to Zhan Ketuan and reissued a new business license. Under Zhan Ketuan's leadership, Beijing Bit resumed work and its daily operations were back on track. Wu Jihan said that Zhan Ketuan no longer held any position in Beijing Bit at that time. The market supervision department's public registration showing Zhan Ketuan as the legal representative was a registration error, and Zhan Ketuan had no right to receive a business license.

What is somewhat dramatic is that before the story of the business license "snatching" was forgotten by people, the legal representative of Beijing Bit changed again.

On September 15, the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System showed that the legal representative of Beijing Bit was changed to Wu Jihan. On the same day, Beijing Bit’s official website announced that Beijing Bit had obtained a business license from the market supervision and management department on September 14, and the business license stated that Wu Jihan was the legal representative of Beijing Bit. At the same time, the respect for Zhan Ketuan has not changed.

Wang Huaitao, a lawyer at Shanghai Xingu Law Firm, told reporters that the change of legal representative often means the transfer of company control, changes in business philosophy and strategy, and even affects the rise and fall of the company. Frequent changes of legal representative are not conducive to the continuity of company system operation and will inevitably affect normal management and plan implementation.

In just four months, the dispute over control between Zhan Ketuan and Wu Jihan has become public again. The two sides are also arguing over official seals, business licenses, and mining machine assets. In addition, according to information obtained by reporters, during this period, the Beijing Haidian District Market Supervision and Administration Bureau also asked Beijing Bit to return its business license within a time limit, but because it could not return the business license, the previously issued business license was invalidated.

In addition, in May this year, Bitcoin will be reduced for the third time. The reward for the creation of new blocks will be reduced from 12.5 bitcoins to 6.25 bitcoins, and the daily bitcoin output will be reduced from 1,800 to 900, and the mining difficulty will be increased again.

However, when the Bitcoin market was on the rise, the legal representative of Beijing Bit had been changed four times. Meanwhile, the two founders, Wu Jihan and Zhan Ketuan, have not yet made peace.

Li Yijiajia admitted that due to the impact of the epidemic, there is not much money circulating in the market, which also has the potential to affect the sales of mining machines and the advancement of AI and other businesses.

Many people believe that Bitmain’s AI and mining machine businesses should develop in parallel in the future.

Li Yijia believes that from the perspective of revenue, mining machine revenue is indeed higher than AI; but from the perspective of investment, the two business sectors are more derived from the division of sales levels. In essence, both require technical support, and mining machine and AI research and development are difficult to separate. From a short-term development perspective, mining machines do have better benefits. But from a long-term perspective, the prospects of AI are also worth looking forward to, and it will cultivate new markets for the company's development. In the future, Bitmain's AI market revenue ratio and the number of partners will both increase. However, when it comes to the implementation of AI projects, hardware companies will have a longer recovery cycle than software companies.

Li Can said that the Bitcoin market is a stock market and will definitely be mined out. The market demand for mining machines may gradually weaken. If the company only makes mining machines, its development will have an end. He hopes that Bitmain will have new space in the fields of mining machines and AI in the future.

In the capital market, the three mining machine giants have always been eager to enter the mainstream capital market. In 2018, Canaan Technology, Bitmain and Ebang International, the three major mining machine manufacturers, collectively went to Hong Kong for listing, but all failed. Now, Canaan Technology and Ebang International have both rung the bell for listing, but Bitmain's listing is still unclear.

Previously, an internal letter from Bitmain indicated that as the legal facts of the lawsuit in Cayman become clear, it is believed that a fair judgment will be obtained soon. By then, the shareholder dispute of Bitmain Group will be completely ended, Bitmain will fully resume production and operation activities, and strive to achieve IPO as soon as possible.

"At present, it may be difficult for the two to shake hands and make peace. Both want to increase their own business and have absolute control over the company, which makes the employees feel uncomfortable. In addition, the market for mining machines is not very good. Now is a period of getting through the difficulties. If we really don't work hard, it will be difficult for anyone to say clearly about the future." Wang Lin was very helpless. "The result of Cayman is also very important. Will there be new changes after the result comes out?"

On October 12, the Beijing Bitmain industrial and commercial information was changed. Zhan Ketuan resigned as manager and Wu Jihan was added as general manager. What other changes will Bitmain's business operations undergo after the industrial and commercial information changes? The reporter contacted Wu Jihan and Zhan Ketuan for relevant questions, but no response was received before press time.

In a 2018 company charter signed by Zhan Ketuan and Wu Jihan of Beijing Bit obtained by the reporter, the purpose of "customer first, technological leadership, unity and cooperation, truth-seeking and pragmatism" was proposed, but the reality is that it is still unclear how the two founders will reconcile.

"No matter what the relationship between the two founders is, the company still has to survive, make money, and move forward." A Bitmain employee told reporters that he hopes people around him can focus on their work. "For the company, the most important thing is to survive, and employees need to think about how to minimize negative impacts and seek greater profit margins."

On December 1, Bitcoin ushered in another bull run. Bitcoin hit a record high, with the price reaching $19,918 (Bitstamp exchange data).

While the Bitcoin market is improving, Bitmain, the world's largest mining machine company that is closely related to the Bitcoin market, is still in a state of "separation" between its two founders.

In the 2018 global unicorn enterprise list released by CB Insights, Bitmain ranked fifth. Correspondingly, founders Zhan Ketuan and Wu Jihan ranked first and second on the "2018 Hurun Blockchain Rich List" with wealth of 29.5 billion yuan and 16.5 billion yuan respectively.

However, the two have gone from "golden partners" to "Game of Thrones" for a year, and disputes have continued around Bitmain's subsidiary Beijing Bitmain Technology Co., Ltd. (Beijing Bitmain). Bitmain's R&D, sales, finance and other departments have split to varying degrees. The outcome of the litigation on the voting rights dispute of Cayman Bitmain may become a key factor in determining the ownership of Bitmain's control.

Amid the impact of the epidemic and changes in the mining machine industry, where will Bitmain, which is still in a state of fragmentation, go? We don’t know.


"Factional Struggle" - Major Personnel Changes within Unisoc


On April 21, 2020, Chu Qing, CEO of Unisoc, recently issued an internal company document, informing that several senior executives were suspected of serious violations of discipline and related personnel appointments and dismissals.


According to the announcement, UNISOC's "former head of the consumer electronics division and executive vice president of UNISOC Wu Di, and former product engineering management department Chen Jiefeng used public funds to entertain the head of a competitor's sales department, and persuaded a UNISOC executive named Wang, who was in the process of leaving, to switch to the competitor, and persuaded his subordinates present to discuss the position and salary conditions of the switch with the competitor. Afterwards, they also lied about entertaining customers and illegally reimbursed. UNISOC stated that this move seriously violated the company's financial management discipline, information confidentiality discipline, and employee ethics, and willfully encroached on company property and corrupted professional ethics! In view of the serious violations of discipline by the two, the company decided to remove them from their positions and prohibit them from entering the company's office area from the date of the decision. At the same time, it will continue to investigate other possible violations of laws and regulations."

It is understood that the competitor mentioned in this internal document is actually ASR Technology Co., Ltd., and the resigned executive Wang is actually Wang Long, the former director of the Pan-Connectivity Business Unit.

It is worth mentioning that ASR has a deep relationship with Unisoc. ASR's CEO Dai Baojia was the founder and CEO of RDA. After Unisoc acquired RDA, he left and founded ASR.

According to the data, ASR was established on April 30, 2015. It is a leading chip design company in China. It is committed to the platform development, solution provision, technical support and services of mobile intelligent communication terminals, Internet of Things, navigation and other consumer electronic chips. Its product line covers multiple communication standards including 2G, 3G and 4G. In 2017, ASR completed the acquisition of Marvell's mobile communications department. This move also made ASR the only domestic baseband company at that time, except for HiSilicon, to have full network access technology (Spreadtrum achieved full network access in 2018).

In addition, although Li Liyou, CEO of Spreadtrum Communications, the predecessor of Spreadtrum, served as the chairman and CEO of Spreadtrum for a long time after Spreadtrum was established, he eventually left Spreadtrum in 2018. Zeng Xuezhong, who joined Spreadtrum in 2017 and became the CEO of Spreadtrum at the end of 2017, also left Spreadtrum shortly after Chu Qing became the co-CEO at the end of 2018. Zhou Weifang, who was promoted from Spreadtrum's marketing director to the vice president of Unigroup Spreadtrum's brand, also left Spreadtrum in 2019.

According to internal sources, after Wu Di, the head of the consumer electronics division, was replaced, Zhou Chen, executive vice president of Unisoc and director of the marketing management department, will take over the relevant work of the consumer electronics business management department and the product engineering management department. At the same time, Zhou Chen will no longer serve as the director of the marketing management department, and Huang Yuning will be appointed as the assistant director of the marketing management department. After Wang Long, the director of another large pan-connectivity division, leaves, he will be replaced by Mi Xiaolong. Chen Jiefeng was originally the marketing director of Unisoc. After being removed from his position, Sun Dian has been appointed as the head of the marketing management department.

It should be pointed out that Unisoc CEO Chu Qing and Unisoc Executive Vice President Zhou Chen were both internal executives of Huawei HiSilicon.

Mi Xiaolong, who took the stage this time, was the co-founder of Xiaomi's semiconductor startup company. He also worked at Huawei HiSilicon. As the founder and planning leader of the team, he completed the development and commercialization of many pioneering chip platforms. He led Huawei's first-generation packet domain core network products for wireless. He was responsible for the development of HiSilicon's Balong platform solutions, enabling the global mass shipment of Huawei's terminal data card products. He completed the development of the X-mode modem project, helping HiSilicon to make important breakthroughs in its self-developed full-network mobile phone chip solutions.

In addition, Huang Yuning, who is the assistant director of the marketing management department of Unisoc, seems to have worked for Huawei HiSilicon. We found that the former chief software architect of HiAI at Huawei HiSilicon was also named Huang Yuning, but it is not certain whether they are the same person.

So far, we can see that the executives from HiSilicon have taken over Spreadtrum in full, while most of the executives who stayed after the merger of RDA and Spreadtrum have left.

The internal "earthquake" of Spreadtrum is probably the result of internal factional disputes. Of course, it is inconvenient for outsiders to comment on the reasons. However, the full appointment of HiSilicon executives is expected to end the continuous turmoil within Spreadtrum in the past two years, which is a good thing for the future development of Spreadtrum.

On April 21, 2020, the CEO office of Unisoc sent another email to all employees, saying, "As managers, the more senior the cadres, the stricter the requirements. All the powers granted by the company to management cadres are used to serve the company's business development and collective interests. The management and organizational changes we have implemented are aimed at building a strong modern science and technology industrial system, rather than relying on the workshops of one or two talented people. Only in this way can we survive and develop in the future, only in this way can we realize the personal values ​​and dreams of all employees, and only in this way can we have a large number of talents and powerful generals."

When talking about Unisoc, we have to mention Unigroup. Since 2013, when Unigroup acquired Spreadtrum Communications, a US listed company, it has sounded the clarion call to enter the integrated circuit chip industry.
In the following years of development, Tsinghua Unigroup became one of the most powerful Chinese technology companies through acquisitions and alliances, rewriting the chip market landscape.


However, after several years of development, with the emergence of the "aftereffects" of a series of mergers and acquisitions by Tsinghua Unigroup, Tsinghua Unigroup, which has always thrived in the capital market, has recently fallen into a debt quagmire!
Recently, many bonds of Tsinghua Unigroup have experienced frequent fluctuations, with some bonds even plummeting by 57.35% in one day. Whether the 17 Tsinghua Unigroup PPN005, which is due to mature on November 15 and has a scale of 1.3 billion yuan, can be redeemed on time has become the focus of market attention.
Data shows that as of the end of June 2020, Tsinghua Unigroup's interest-bearing debt totaled 153.6 billion yuan, of which 83.3 billion yuan was short-term debt due within one year and 70.3 billion yuan was long-term debt. As of November 2020, the company's outstanding domestic bonds amounted to 17.4 billion yuan, of which 6.1 billion yuan was due within one year.
This also means that more and more debts are coming one after another. On November 15, Tsinghua Unigroup has a 1.3 billion yuan bond due, and on December 10, a 450 million US dollar offshore bond of Tsinghua Unigroup will also mature.
In a hurry, Tsinghua Unigroup had to pledge 16.1% of its shares in Unigroup Guoxin, and the controlling shareholder of Unigroup Guoxin pledged the shares as a guarantee for Tsinghua Unigroup's 10 billion yuan loan to offset the debt.
On November 13, news came from the industry that Bank of Beijing is considering providing financing support to Tsinghua Unigroup and is currently going through the approval process. There are still variables and the form of financing support has not yet been finalized.
However, as early as October, Tsinghua Unigroup announced that it would not repay a 1 billion yuan "perpetual bond", that is, the company gave up redeeming the perpetual private bond "15 Tsinghua Unigroup PPN006". However, this debt is actually due in 2025. This news seems to send a signal to the outside world that "there is no money".
If Tsinghua Unigroup has a smooth year in 2020, its next days will be doomed to be turbulent. Statistics show that 2021 will be the peak year for Tsinghua Unigroup's debt repayment, with an amount of about 8.31 billion yuan.
Can Tsinghua Unigroup survive the financial crisis, get out of its debt dilemma as soon as possible, and continue to write the story of domestic chips?
There is no absolute conclusion yet, so we can only wait and see!

Internal fighting between ARM China and its headquarters in the UK and US


In the summer of 2020, Arm China, Arm's only joint venture in the world, was caught up in a power grab. Four statements, many twists and turns, and it is still a Rashomon.

On June 11, Arm suddenly issued a media statement, announcing that it had joined forces with its major shareholder Hillhouse Capital to remove Wu Xiong'ang from the position of CEO of Arm China on the grounds of endangering the interests of the company.

The next day, ARM Technology issued a statement saying that Arm's accusations were groundless, the removal process was not legal, and Wu Xiong'ang would continue to serve as CEO to lead the company.


On June 15, ARM China published a joint letter signed by company employees on its official public account to strongly support Wu Xiong'ang.


From a procedural point of view, Wu Xiong'ang is still the CEO of Arm China, but will he be able to continue to lead the joint venture in the future? How will the incident end? There is still no definite result. But what is certain is that Arm and Hopu Capital (Arm China's shareholder) have completely broken off with the other party, the Arm China management team, and no longer trust each other.

Wu Xiong'ang

Wu Xiong'ang revealed that after several months of investigation, he found three "insiders" planted by Arm headquarters in the legal, strategic and financial departments of Arm China. These three people worked together to falsify accounts and enrich themselves. After being discovered, they disappeared collectively with their computers and USB shields, and no one could contact them.

Wu Xiong'ang mentioned a detail: a secretary to the board of directors in the company was sent by Arm headquarters, and a client who had contact with him secretly told Wu Xiong'ang: "I have never seen a secretary to the board of directors with such great power."


"Arm wants to take back control of the joint venture. They think your joint venture is a subsidiary and must listen to me completely," said Wu Xiong'ang.

Arm accused Wu Xiong'ang of setting up his own company, while Wu Xiong'ang believed that Arm was "arrogant and interfered too much in Arm China."

Even though "grabbing official seals" is no longer a new thing in 2020, as a top semiconductor company, the conflicts among the management of ARM China still make people feel incredible.

On the one hand, Arm China is in the midst of a power struggle, and people are in turmoil. On the other hand, the merger between Arm and Nvidia is also facing huge obstacles. This joint venture, which was given high hopes at the beginning of its establishment, is now in a dangerous gap.

Arm Technology (China) Co., Ltd., commonly known as Arm China, is the only joint venture company of Arm in the world. Many people think that Arm China is Arm's subsidiary in China, which is only responsible for the business in China. But in fact, the establishment and business of Arm China are very complicated.


Headquartered in Cambridge, Arm is the world's leading semiconductor intellectual property (IP) provider. The Arm architecture, developed based on the reduced instruction set computing (RISC), has long dominated the mobile device sector due to its advantages such as high performance and low power consumption.

It should be noted that Arm does not sell chips directly, but sells intellectual property to downstream chip design companies. It is a cornerstone in the semiconductor industry.

After 2010, with the development of mobile Internet, the importance and influence of Arm architecture have become increasingly prominent. In 2018, Arm's revenue in China accounted for 25% of the total. Smartphone manufacturers such as Huawei and Xiaomi, and chip IC-related companies such as HiSilicon and Tsinghua Unigroup have maintained frequent cooperation with Arm.

In order to better promote the development and implementation of the Arm ecosystem in China, Arm and relevant Chinese departments had the idea of ​​establishing a joint venture. With the preferential treatment given by relevant departments and a lot of green lights, the entire establishment process of Arm China went very smoothly.

Wu Xiong'ang, who joined Arm in the United States in 2004, told Huxiu that he moved his family to Shanghai three years after joining the company and began to assist Arm in its business development in China. As the proportion of China's business in Arm's overall revenue continued to increase, Wu Xiong'ang joined the Global Executive Committee in 2014 and was appointed CEO of Arm China in 2017.

In May 2017, ARM and Houan Innovation Fund signed a memorandum of cooperation in Beijing, planning to establish a joint venture in Shenzhen - with Arm providing technology under the premise of Chinese control.

It is worth noting that Houan Innovation Fund was jointly established by Hopu Investment and Anchuang Fund. The former is a long-established private equity fund founded by Fang Fenglei, a Chinese partner of Goldman Sachs Group. Although it is established overseas, it mainly invests in Chinese projects; and the executive director of Anchuang Fund is Wu Xiong'ang, CEO of ARM China.

Wu Xiong'ang recalled that the decision to join forces with Hillhouse Capital was made after careful consideration by Arm.

"Arm does not want to have too many scattered shareholders and prefers centralized management. In addition, Arm also hopes to find some central financial institutions or investors with state-owned backgrounds in addition to industrial capital. After all, our IP market share is over 95%, and we may face monopoly problems," he explained.

Arm China Fundraising PPT

However, Wu Xiong'ang chose Hopu after interviewing multiple rounds of investors because of his own selfish reasons. He wanted to find an investment institution that was not so knowledgeable about technology. The advantage of this is that the two parties would only have a pure financial investment relationship, and would not interfere too much with the company's future technology direction and development path.

After several years of preparation, in April 2018, Chinese investors and SoftBank Group officially signed an agreement to establish a joint venture - Arm China. The joint venture is controlled by the Chinese party with a 51% stake and the foreign party with a 49% stake. Among them, Arm owns a 47.33% stake.

In addition, Amber Leading is the entity invested by Hopu this time, holding 36% of the shares. The third is Ningbo Meishan Free Trade Zone Anchuang Growth Equity Investment Partnership, which holds 13.3% of the shares. Anchuang Fund is its manager.

After a series of equity penetrations, the final Chinese controlling stake was determined to be "Hopu Investments owns 35% of the Chinese capital, Wu Xiong'ang holds 16%, for a total of 51%."

In fact, judging from the above equity distribution, Arm is still the largest single shareholder. However, Hopu and Chuangan (which can be understood as Wu Xiong'ang) signed a concerted action agreement to ensure that the Chinese side can have control over the joint venture. In terms of voting rights, Arm has 4 votes, Hopu Capital has 3 votes, and Wu Xiong'ang has 2 votes.

Although there are four directors representing Arm, four representing Chinese investors (including Wu Xiong'ang and three directors from Hopu Investments), and one director selected from "ecosystem partners", only one of the three Hopu directors is Chinese; and the four directors sent by Arm are divided into two factions: Arm and SoftBank.


In other words, although internal power appears to be checked and balanced, the balance can be tipped at any time due to the complex intertwining of interests.

After its formal establishment, backed by China, the world's largest electronics manufacturing and consumption country, Arm China, which is fully responsible for Arm's licensing and distribution in China, has seen its performance steadily increase, with its revenue and growth rate gradually surpassing Arm as a whole.

Wu Xiong'ang revealed that Arm China's revenue in 2019 increased by nearly 50% year-on-year, accounting for 27% of ARM's global IP business.

But as mentioned earlier, compared with other foreign semiconductor companies that have set up offices in China, the uniqueness of ARM China is that it is not a simple "distribution office", but a completely independent joint venture company that is responsible for its own profits and losses.

Wu Xiong'ang has publicly stated many times that Arm China has not only become an independently operated Chinese company, but its headquarters is now in Shenzhen, making it a local Shenzhen company.

In short, the complex shareholder structure, the positioning of a "Shenzhen local company", and the ownership of R&D and patent rights all laid hidden dangers for the subsequent power struggle.

On June 9, Arm announced that the board of directors of Arm China voted by majority to remove Wu Xiong'ang and temporarily appointed two co-CEOs. The reason they gave was that by the end of 2019, the company had received complaints from whistleblowers and several current and former employees, claiming that Wu Xiong'ang had privately participated in the establishment of an external US dollar fund Alphatecture without the approval of the board of directors.


According to public reports, after about half a year of investigation and verification, on June 1, Arm announced internally that Wu Xiong'ang was dismissed from his position as director and chairman of Arm China based on the Articles of Association and the Joint Venture Contract. They said they had sufficient evidence and would even sue Wu Xiong'ang for duty-related crimes.

However, in response to the accusations from the outside world, Wu Xiong'ang gave Huxiu a completely different answer, which was the extremely absurd scene at the beginning.

In his account, the whole incident was extremely dramatic.

From June 1 to 3, in order to obtain Wu Xiong'ang's 16% equity, Hopu approached Wu to discuss a "breakup agreement", but ultimately failed to reach an agreement, as Wu Xiong'ang had no intention of handing over his equity. As a result of the two parties' failure to reach an agreement, Wu Xiong'ang was directly dismissed at the board meeting.

According to Wu Xiong'ang's recollection, on June 4, which was the regular board meeting, the original board charter was to announce the employee stock ownership plan that had been brewing for two years on this day.

"For some reason, the board's charter that day became 'vote to remove me.'" In the end, the board voted overwhelmingly with a 7:1 ratio to remove Wu Xiong'ang from his positions as CEO and general manager.

This sudden change caught Wu Xiong'ang off guard, but Wu Xiong'ang still had the weapon of "consensus agreement" in his hand. The existence of this agreement gave him the confidence to immediately respond publicly that "the vote of the board of directors this time is not legal and has no legal effect."

Since then, the story has gradually developed into a dramatic "seal-grabbing" direction. Arm China began to publicly accuse Hopu Investment and some directors of Arm headquarters of privately sending people to frequently contact the customers of the Chinese joint venture and threatening to modify or cancel the existing contracts with the joint venture.

"There were even directors who called the joint venture's engineering team to threaten and harass individual employees," he revealed.

An open letter from ARM

Arm headquarters responded with a statement, directly pointing out that Wu Xiong'ang refused to implement the board's resolution, occupied the official seal, and affected the normal operation of Arm China.

The conflict between the two sides has completely intensified. Bloomberg reported that in order to prevent Arm's people from entering the office of Arm China, Wu Xiong'ang even hired security personnel to block the door.

"Arm headquarters has obtained a letter of support signed by Arm CEO Simon Segars and SoftBank Group founder Masayoshi Son to apply to the Shenzhen administrative agency for a new seal for the Chinese joint venture, and then replace the company's legal person," the article mentioned.

Due to the complex structure of Arm China, the removal process did not go as smoothly as Arm expected.

Obviously, due to the special attributes of ARM China - a joint venture with an independent board of directors, and the fact that Arm does not hold a majority of shares, it is impossible for it to directly remove Wu Xiong'ang; and Hillhouse Capital, in conjunction with Arm, does have an advantage in voting rights, but Hillhouse Capital has signed a concerted action agreement with Wu Xiong'ang, resulting in the situation being stuck.

SoftBank, the company behind Arm, did not play much of a role in the turmoil. "Mr. Sun is too busy, really too busy." Wu Xiong'ang also mentioned that SoftBank's investment logic is to only invest and rarely intervene in daily operations. The financial report released in May 2020 showed that SoftBank had a record operating loss of 1.4 trillion yen (about 13 billion U.S. dollars) and was unable to take care of itself. "But Mr. Sun has arranged for an envoy to come to China to understand the situation," Wu Xiong'ang said.

So, what exactly caused the conflict between the two sides to intensify, to the point that Arm and Hopu joined forces to target Wu Xiong'ang?
1. The conflict between Hopu and ARM China: Conflict of interests such as equity and investment logic
Hillhouse and Arm believe that Wu Xiong'ang's biggest problem is that he established the Alphatecture investment fund to invest in some start-ups in the Arm ecosystem on the mainland, but the establishment of this fund did not receive the approval of the Arm China board of directors.

In other words, they believe that Wu Xiong'ang is using Arm's money and customer relationships to "set up his own business," and they even worry that the fund established by Wu Xiong'ang will directly compete with the two major shareholders, Hillhouse and SoftBank.

Wu Xiong'ang responded that the resolution to establish the Alphatecture investment fund had already been publicly discussed at a board meeting in August 2019.

Wu Xiong'ang pointed out to Huxiu that although one American director raised objections at the time, the other directors voted in favor.

"This resolution has been approved by the board of directors and is reasonable and legal! Moreover, the funds I set up myself will not compete with Arm, because Arm itself does not make investments."

As for why there is no record of the resolution passed by the board of directors, Wu Xiong'ang revealed that "this is the result of Houpu people arbitrarily modifying the board resolution."

Wu Xiong'ang believes that the fund is just an excuse they found, and the core conflict between Hillhouse and himself is the conflict of interest.

This is reflected in investment. "I hope to invest in some small and medium-sized start-ups, while Hopu prefers to invest in large companies that have already reached a certain scale. The two sides have different views on technology. But they don't understand technology at all. I dare say that Hopu still doesn't understand what Arm does!"

On the other hand, there is a disagreement over equity and listing. Wu Xiong'ang speculated that the reason why Hopu wanted to take back its 16% equity was to sell the equity back to Arm to realize the exit of himself and other investors.

"Hopu and Arm do not want ARM to be listed independently in China, but according to the original plan, ARM China will be listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board within two to three years!" said Wu Xiong'ang.

2. The conflict between Arm and Anmou: subsidiary or joint venture?
"ARM is a joint venture, not a wholly-owned subsidiary, but the British's desire to control the company has long gone beyond the scope of a joint venture." Wu Xiong'ang accused this group of British people of having an unimaginable desire for control.
"When signing a contract, both parties will have an 'information firewall', but Arm is not willing to comply. When ARM and Arm headquarters were first established, they agreed to 'allow competition and cross-licensing', but the actual implementation was not smooth. This is the arrogance of the British."

According to Wu Xiong'ang, this "arrogance" is also reflected in research and development -
"The revenue from our new products far exceeded their expected revenue, and even directly crushed their products in a certain product line. This caused at least one team on their side to resolutely refuse to cooperate, so that when we later proposed new product development and planning, (we had to face) all kinds of wrangling and all kinds of malicious intent."

The Huawei incident was also the fuse for the intensification of the conflict between Arm and ARM China.

When the US ban was upgraded in May 2019, Arm's UK headquarters bypassed ARM China and immediately stated that it would cut off supply to Huawei. ARM China subsequently expressed its support for Huawei and would not cut off supply, which also caused dissatisfaction among some people at Arm headquarters.

The various conflicts between Arm and ARM are the core conflicts of this farce. Removing the CEO and taking back the equity is to take back the control.

It is clear that Wu Xiong'ang only owns 16% of the shares. When Hopu and Arm headquarters stand on the same side, he has almost no chance of winning. There are even accusations that Wu Xiong'ang, as a manager, should prioritize the interests of the company and shareholders instead of openly standing against shareholders and letting the company fall into farce.

As for the "Concerted Action Agreement" signed by Wu Xiong'ang and Hopu, Fang Fang, a lawyer at Shanghai Mingting Law Firm, pointed out that concerted action is usually achieved through the following methods:
First, investors/shareholders reach a consensus and form a unanimous voting agreement before the general meeting of shareholders or the board of directors;
Second, the investor/shareholder authorizes one of them to exercise voting rights;
Third, if the investors/shareholders cannot reach a consensus, the opinion of one of them shall prevail.

In addition, the legal effect of the agreement on concerted action is itself controversial, which has also caused a wrangling between the two parties. Arm UK has always insisted on the resolution to remove the board of directors.

In response to many questions such as the current situation and future development, ARM China responded to Huxiu in September and said it would hold a media conference call at the end of the month to respond. However, as of press time, the meeting was not held as scheduled.

The farce has not yet ended, and Nvidia's acquisition of Arm has put Arm China in the gap between several major companies and even several countries.

According to the latest report from the Financial Times, a source close to Wu Xiong'ang said that after Nvidia completes the acquisition of Arm, Wu Xiong'ang "will still be the CEO of Arm China"; but other reports also pointed out that a person close to Wu Xiong'ang said: "He (Wu Xiong'ang) knows that he will eventually be removed from office, but this is his weapon (weight) to obtain a resignation agreement."

At present, Arm and Arm China have not reached a consensus on Wu Xiong'ang, and Wu Xiong'ang has not given up his own interests. This has become a Rashomon.

Regarding the question of "how much impact will the current acquisition have on Arm China", Arm China pointed out to Huxiu: "This acquisition will still need to be approved by relevant departments in multiple countries in the future, which may take about 18 months. At present, it has no impact on Arm China."

Indeed, ARM China's business is still going on. On October 13, ARM China officially released the second generation of AI dedicated processor (AI Processing Unit) - "Zhouyi" Z2 AIPU, which has doubled the computing power of the previous generation "Zhouyi" Z1 AIPU.


But as trade frictions and the Arm acquisition progress, the tension between Arm China and Arm has entered a critical stage.

It is reported that Arm has not received a share of Arm China's sales revenue for three months. Previously, Arm also stated that if the removal of Wu Xiong'ang could not be properly resolved, Arm would consider suspending its support for Arm China, "as a last resort."

Compared with Arm's self-developed business in China and Arm's licensing business in China, the revenue share of Arm China is too small. Zhouyi has been updated for two generations, but the splash it has made is not that big. The most profitable sales business is still backed by Arm's technology and ecosystem.

If this incident causes Arm to use its last resort - stopping technology and licensing support, the business of the joint venture will be greatly affected, which Wu Xiong'ang also admitted to Huxiu.
Ultimately, ARM China still has to rely on Arm to survive. If it is separated, the joint venture will exist in name only. If the two parties cannot reconcile, Wu Xiong'ang will be the only one to be eliminated.

Co-founder Hermann Hauser said in an earlier media interview that selling Arm to Nvidia would be a disaster for the industry. Even after the deal was announced, he created a website saveARM.co.uk to collect public support and published an open letter asking the British government to save ARM to prevent Nvidia from completing the acquisition.

It is worth noting that after Arm becomes a US company, it needs to comply with CFIUS (Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States) and needs to comply with this regulation when exporting to markets including China and the United Kingdom.

But the fact is that whether it is sold or not, the British semiconductor giant is being infiltrated by the United States.

According to Wu Xiong'ang's recollection, when he joined Arm, about 90% of the management team worked in the UK, but now there are only two or three of them, and most of the rest, including the current CEO, work in Silicon Valley, U.S. In addition, since the CEO moved to the U.S. in 2007, he has started recruiting people in the U.S. on a large scale.

Considering the current state of U.S.-China relations and the potential impact of this deal, the transaction is likely to be rejected.

On September 27, Academician Ni Guangnan attended the Fourth Information Security Industry Development Forum and gave a speech. He talked about Nvidia's acquisition. He believed that China's Ministry of Commerce might veto the acquisition: "Now the American company Nvidia is launching a merger with ARM. If the merger is successful, it will definitely be very unfavorable to us, so I believe our Ministry of Commerce may deny this merger. Whether it can be successful or not, I don't know." The latest news on October 21 is that several of China's most influential technology companies, including Huawei, have been communicating with China's State Administration for Market Regulation, hoping that the department will either veto the deal or add additional conditions to ensure that they can continue to use ARM's technology.

In other words, if the deal goes through, it will not be good news for the Arm ecosystem and Arm China. For example, China has begun to gradually support the development of new architectures, such as the RISC-V instruction set that the Chinese industry has been paying attention to, even though the instruction set is not yet mature.

In other words, under the general trend of emphasizing "internal circulation", ARM China's position will become even more embarrassing in the future.

In October 2020, Arm CEO Simon Segers gave the Chinese media a temporary reassurance at a media question-and-answer session on the merger and acquisition case - "Nvidia's acquisition will not change Arm's investment in the Chinese market. The Chinese joint venture is very important to Arm. The situation in Arm China is still under control, and there are ways to solve the management problems in China."

At the critical moment when this acquisition is being advanced, the worst outcome of the leadership change at ARM China is that not only Wu Xiong'ang, but the entire ARM China will become a discarded pawn.

If you pay attention to the semiconductor industry, you will find that mergers and acquisitions have been extremely frequent in recent times. Giants such as Intel, Nvidia, and AMD are all scrambling to gain territory. With the proposal of several blockbuster deals, the semiconductor industry's model of clear division of labor and global collaboration is being challenged. The golden age of globalization has passed, and the same is true for the semiconductor industry.

In an era of division among giants, the safest approach is to hold the cards that have been dealt firmly back in one's own hands. This is also the root cause of the conflict between Arm and ARM China.

A speck of dust from the times, when it falls on everyone's head, is like a mountain. Will this special joint venture company, ARM China, become a victim of this process?


There is no room for two tigers in one mountain? Internal fighting among top executives at SMIC


On December 15, SMIC issued an announcement stating that it had noticed a civil complaint filed in a U.S. court on December 10, 2020 (U.S. time) regarding some of the company's securities. The plaintiff in the complaint filed the lawsuit on behalf of himself and other persons who claimed to have purchased some of the company's securities in the U.S. over-the-counter securities market. SMIC stated that it is carefully evaluating the above matters and will actively defend itself.

Also on December 15, SMIC announced that it would appoint industry giant Jiang Shangyi as vice chairman of the SMIC board of directors, a Class II executive director and a member of the strategic committee.

Who is Chiang Shang-yi? He is a top expert in the semiconductor industry. According to the announcement, he is 74 years old. In his 45 years in the semiconductor industry, he has participated in the research and development of CMOS, NMOS, Bipolar, DMOS, SOS, SOI, GaAs laser, LED, electron beam lithography, silicon-based solar cells and other projects. At TSMC, he led the research and development of key nodes such as 0.25μm, 0.18μm, 0.15μm, 0.13μm, 90nm, 65nm, 40nm, 28nm, 20nm and 16nm FinFET, which enabled TSMC's industry status to develop from a technology follower to a technology leader.
He worked at Texas Instruments and HP before becoming TSMC's vice president of research and development. When he retired at the end of 2013, Chiang Shangyi's position was co-chief operating officer. He then served as advisor to TSMC's chairman, independent non-executive director of SMIC, and CEO of Wuhan Hongxin Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd.
In June 2020, Jiang Shangyi resigned from his position at Wuhan Hongxin and now officially joins the board of directors of SMIC.
Liang Mengsong may not welcome Jiang Shangyi's arrival. According to media reports, the current co-CEO Liang Mengsong submitted a written resignation to the board of directors in a shocking manner during the meeting, and SMIC Chairman Zhou Zixue did not approve it on the spot. However, since co-CEO Liang Mengsong and Zhao Haijun have worked together for the past few years, there have been rumors that the two have their own strengths but have been at odds for a long time, and Chairman Zhou Zixue has always served as a bridge between the two. This time, SMIC Chairman Zhou Zixue strongly invited Jiang Shangyi to return as vice chairman, which triggered Liang Mengsong's dissatisfaction, who was not aware of it in advance, so he angrily submitted a written resignation to the board of directors.
In the open letter, Liang Mengsong said: "On December 9, last Wednesday morning, I received a call from the chairman informing me that Mr. Jiang would be appointed as the company's vice chairman. I was very surprised and puzzled by this because I had no knowledge of this matter beforehand. I deeply felt that I was no longer respected and trusted." He also pointed out: "After the company's board of directors and shareholders' meeting approve Mr. Jiang's nomination, I will formally submit my resignation. However, the company should give a comprehensive and fair evaluation of my contributions over the past three years, and I should have the right to accept and appeal."
On December 16, SMIC responded to this matter:
The Board of Directors of Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (the "Company") has noted that there have been media reports that Dr. Liang Mongsong, Executive Director and Co-Chief Executive Officer of the Company, intends to resign from the Company, and the Company has been informed of Dr. Liang's conditional resignation intention.
The Company is currently actively verifying with Dr. Liang his true intention to resign. Any further announcement on the above matters will be made in due course in accordance with the "Securities Listing Rules of the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited" and the "Shanghai Stock Exchange Science and Technology Innovation Board Stock Listing Rules". Any personnel changes in the Company's top management will be subject to the announcement issued by the Company.
Faced with internal personnel changes, domestic project promotion, and overseas lawsuits, what kind of future will SMIC face in the vortex? We don't know!

In addition to the "constant melon-eating" in the IC circle in 2020, it was also an extraordinary year. At the 2020 China Integrated Circuit Design Industry Annual Conference on December 10, Professor Wei Shaojun, Chairman of the Integrated Circuit Design Branch of the China Semiconductor Industry Association, said that in 2020, there were 2,218 chip design companies in China, and China's integrated circuit design industry has made remarkable progress that has attracted worldwide attention. This is the result of everyone's joint efforts. By 2035, we will achieve the goal of initially building China into a socialist modern power. The integrated circuit industry has a great and arduous task, especially the chip design industry, which is the main force in the research and development of integrated circuit products and has a greater responsibility .

Source: Comprehensive network content

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